In recent years, robots for home use such as care robots or housetask support robots are being developed actively. Since robots for home use, which are different from industrial robots, are operated by people who are not trained in robots for home use, motions should be simply taught. Further, since a motion environment in which the robots do tasks varies according to individual homes, the robots should flexibly cope with a wide variety of home environments.
Further, model changes at manufacturing sites have been frequently observed in order to realize small lot production in great varieties. For this reason, a number of factories introduce cell production system, and tasks are done by manpower. Particularly tasks that treat flexible objects such as tasks for inserting flexible substrates are complicated and thus it is difficult for robots to automatize the tasks. It is significant that tasks in factories and domestic tasks and care tasks, which are done mainly by manpower at present, are supported by robots as the population ages and fewer babies are born and taskforce reduces in the future. Therefore, in order to realize robots that support manpower tasks, it is necessary that robots are easily operated by untrained people and flexibly move in a wide variety of environmental fluctuations.
As a system for teaching the motions of robots, a teaching system that uses a teaching pendant or programing is provided for industrial use. However, it is difficult for people who are not trained in domestic robots to operate such a system. Further, it is difficult to teach a task for moving while feeding back a contact force, such as insertion of a flexible substrate in order to cope with environmental fluctuation. On the other hand, a direct teaching system for directly holding a robot arm to operate is provided (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 59-157715). This system enables the motions of a robot to be directly created only by means of induction of a robot arm to a desired direction, and the system that is very effective in view of an intuitive operation.
On the other hand, in order to move a robot in a wide variety of environments, a system for creating teaching data for basic tasks and creating teaching data for increasing/decreasing or combining (editing) the basic workpieces when an environment fluctuates is present (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 06-337711). Further, a sensory feedback system for correcting a motion trajectory through a feedback signal from a force sensor and simultaneously moving a robot arm is provided (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 06-023682). In this system, when burr is removed by a robot, a measured value of the force sensor is measured and a burr generating state is observed so that the motion of the robot can be corrected according to the condition of the burr. Further, a system, with which a person directly holds a robot arm and laws of sensory feedback performed by the person at a time of a task is extracted, is provided (see “Desired Trajectory and Sensory Feedback Control Law Synthesis for an Origami-Folding Robot based on the Statistical Feature of Direct Teaching by a Human” written by Kenta Tanaka, Robotics Society of Japan, Vol. 27 No. 6 (P. 685 to P. 695) July, 2009)(hereinafter, this literature is called as “K. Tanaka's Literature”). In both Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 06-023682 and K. Tanaka's Literature stated above, desired environmental conditions are sensed and a motion is made while feedback is being performed, thereby making it possible to flexibly coping with an environmental fluctuation.
Further, a system for evaluating a person's skilled technique is provided (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2003-281287).